


Family Stories

by Aithilin



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 11:36:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7843411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/pseuds/Aithilin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurogane doesn't remember just how he told Fai about his family and life in Suwa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family Stories

Kurogane wasn't sure when the story came out. If he had told Fai about Suwa— his family, his people— during a quiet moment alone in a peaceful moment, or if it all came out when they ran into a double of himself. If he had to answer questions about the smiling, confident man he remembered being taller; if he had to explain why he knew the words and movements of the helpers in shrines similar enough to his homeland. 

He didn't actually remember telling Fai. He didn't remember how the conversation started, or if it was in reaction to something in a new world (a living set of parents? A living brother? A living world and past they were inevitably ripped away from again, and again, and again). 

But here they were, with Fai laughing at a stupid joke from a man who looked and acted like Kurogane’s father as he remembered. Here was Fai helping to prepare dinner with his usual bright smile and flair with a woman whose grace and careful movements he remembered from a shrine that seemed so much bigger and ornate in his memory. 

It wasn't Suwa— not his Suwa, he knew— but a modern city with the same name and far too few farms in sight of the big lake. There were few green spaces, and what the city did have was all carefully manicured and cared for by people not related to him— to this world’s version. It wasn't Suwa. These weren't his parents. And the awkward youth who was all lean, gangly limbs, sitting at the table with a local history book with Syaoran was _definitely_ not him (though he supposed he couldn't fault the boy for his blushes at every teasing smile from Fai). 

This wasn't his family. 

His family was in the boy absorbing every scrap of information the youth next to him at the too-small dinner table gave up. His family was the girl, world’s away, who would be receiving boxes of candy and treats and images of her namesake made into combs and trinkets. His family was the strange little creature perched on his shoulder, expressing joy at every new scrap of information or smell of new food. His family was the blond man, with magic carefully hidden in this world, moving around the laughing woman in a too-small kitchen like a whirlwind of bright colours and smiles. 

Kurogane remembered quiet nights, where he told Fai about the great manor house and his mother’s discipline. He remembered snowy worlds where he wrapped a cloak around Fai to shield him from the sight of too-tall cliffs and bodies dropped into the grey snows beneath, and told his idiot lover about warm summer suns on fields and rivers and the endless lake. He remembered dark caves and crawling demons that ate bones, and Fai asking about his mother’s smile. He remembered clearing battlefields with Fai at his back, and laughing over memories of his father and faithful retainer (though now he had suspicions of something else) while alcohol flowed between them during the victory celebrations. 

And now, in this small home with open doors and laughter he hadn't heard in years, he suspected there would be stories after dinner. That he would drag Fai up to the roof to watch the foreign stars while the house slept (because a night watch was a hard habit to break), and recount all the scoldings he received as a child. All the soft indications of disappointment that were a hundred— a thousand— times worse than his mother’s fury. Tonight, he suspected, he would be telling Fai not to use the jokes this version of his father told, or the nicknames from a father to a son that were not meant for him. Tonight, he suspected that Fai would rest against him with a smile and blanket, and ask why his mother was so patient and his father so kind. 

Kurogane wasn't sure when the story came out. But he suspected that it wasn't all at once— like Fai’s was. He didn't know when he started telling it, or when Fai started asking questions about the events that shaped him. 

But watching this— his past that could have been and his future he will kill to protect— he wasn't dreading the questions or concern or the disruption to his usual method of brushing off his history. He just wondered if his mother would have been so patient and gentle with Fai, as this woman was. Or if his father would have been so easy to accept, so generous, with Fai like this man was.


End file.
